Jon-Michael Debona:
CLASS OF 1992
Warner Robins High SchoolClass of 1992
Warner robins, GA
Jon-Michael's Story
After high school, I attended Georgia Tech and DeKalb College and finally graduated with my Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Southern Polytechnic in March of 1997. While finishing college, I met my wife Gina whom I married in February of 1999. Around the same time, I also began my career in Internet service and telecom as the first full-time employee at a small, family-owned company in Marietta called Trusted Net (originally Discovery Communications until we nearly got sued by the parent company of the Discovery Channel), which like all of my previous employers and so many other companies from the dot-com era doesn't exist in the same form today as it did then.
After a year at Trusted Net, I spent 3 years at MediaOne (later to be acquired by AT&T Broadband, now Comcast) initially as an Internet Engineer in the High Speed Data division and later as a Sales Engineer in the Business Services division. Gina and I bought our first house in Acworth just a couple months before we got married. Acworth was a long commute for me to Stone Mountain and Norcross, but Gina was still finishing her Bachelor's degree in Human Resources at Kennesaw State University while working full-time at a SunTrust branch in South Cobb.
Upon the acquisition of MediaOne by the AT&T "Deathstar" in late Summer of 2000, I was offered a severance package that I couldn't refuse. I took a week of vacation and immediately began working as the southeastern region's Sales Engineer for a VC-funded start-up called Manage.Com (now defunct) based in Silicon Valley. We had some successful executives running the company including the CFO who previously helped facilitate the IPO of Oracle under Larry Ellison, but after only 3 months I did not see much of a future for the company so I accepted an offer from a company based closer to home. Interestingly enough, Manage.Com called their entire sales organization to a meeting in New York and let them all go in an effort to "reorganize the company" less than a month after I had left.
In October of 2000, I took (what I thought was) a more promising position as the Advanced Technology Lab Manager reporting to the CTO at another VC-funded start-up, BroadRiver Communications. This time it was based in Alpharetta, GA, and managed by executives whom I knew and trusted from MediaOne. Gina and I sold our first house and moved to Cumming. I would only have a 10-minute commute to Alpharetta, and now Gina would have the long commute to the SunTrust corporate offices in downtown Atlanta but be closer to her family in Gainesville.
Less than a year later the bleeding-edge voice over IP carrier BroadRiver Communications was about to run out of funding. I was there until 5:00PM on Friday, August 31, 2001, when the few of us employees remaining would learn our fate. We would not be purchased by Cbeyond nor Cox. The ride w...Expand for more
as over. We packed up our personal belongings and began our quest for new jobs. Gina and I had a mortgage payment that was more than double what it was on our first house, the dot-com bubble had just burst, and then 9/11...
Luckily we still had some money in the bank and some available credit. Finally, nearly 3 months later, US LEC (now PAETEC) hired me as a Solutions Engineer which was similar to my sales engineering positions in the past. The Alpharetta office was directly across the street from my former lab in BroadRiver's building, so the commute would be the same. The job paid less, but we could still live in the same house and have a similar lifestyle but not be able to save quite as much.
After a year and half with US LEC, I had begun building a substantial customer base for my own network integration company. In July, 2003, I left US LEC and accepted a position as the CTO of a growing mortgage company headquartered in Roswell, GA. Simultaneously, I was able to manage my own business and sometimes partnered with Elias Rodriguez and his company Loui Consulting Group. We traded business, and I did some contract work for them off and on through 2007. In December of 2003, Gina and I took some time off work for the adoption of our first child, Abygail. She was born in a hospital just 3 miles from the home at the time of Eli and his wife Brandon in Rogers, Arkansas--a story we will always remember. We lived in their basement with our spoiled Chihuahua Lucy and newborn Abbie for over 2 weeks to satisfy the requirements for the Interstate Compact (ICPC) and finalize the adoption.
Within a few months of Abbie's birth, my father was diagnosed with an acute auto-immune condition called Guillain-Barré syndrome which can cause paralysis or even death. Thankfully, he has fully recovered. With the stresses of a new family, an ill father, shady business activities at the mortgage company, and the administrative headaches of running a business, in late 2004 I left the mortgage company and closed my business. I returned to my old position at US LEC in December, 2004.
US LEC was acquired by PAETEC in early 2007. PAETEC is now the second largest telecom carrier (CLEC) in the US that was not created from AT&T or a "Baby Bell." I am still currently employed as a Solutions Engineer III by PAETEC as of March, 2009. Gina was laid off by SunTrust in late 2007 after 9 years with the company. She is currently employed by Morgan Stanley and works at the Pinnacle building in Buckhead. I commute most days from our home in Cumming to the current PAETEC offices in the Concourse office park (next to the "King and Queen" towers) in Sandy Springs. Abbie starts pre-K in the Fall of 2008. Shortly after beginning the process to adopt a second child, we found out that Gina was pregnant. Our youngest daughter Kyleigh was born January 16, 2009.
Register for Free to view all details!
Yearbooks
Reunions
